Improve My Jazz Collection!

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Since you are a Coltrane fan, his album "Giant Steps" is a must.

Also have a look at John Zorn, if you're looking for non-fusion Jazz with progressive elements.

More or less contemporary with the Monk/Coltrane music you've been listening to:

• Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out
• Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah-Um
• John Coltrane - Crescent
• Miles Davis - Round About Midnight (feat. Coltrane)
• Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
• The Art Farmer Quartet - Sing me Softly of the Blues

All classic recordings from the mid 50s to the mid 60s, pre fusion but highly inventive. 

I have 7 or 8 Monk albums and Brilliant Corners is the one that floors me the most ... you gotta get that
I also echo Coltrane's Giant Steps plus Ascension and Interstellar Space (albums pretty soon after A Love Supreme), Brubeck's Time Out, Hancock's Maiden Voyage or Speak Like A Child (plus later albums like Sextant and Thrust), Miles Davis late 60s jazz-rock phase (Jack Johnson and Miles In The Sky are two underrated albums)

If you want a different angle I believe Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman are two people you should investigate but I haven't investigated enough myself ... so I can't recommend anything ....

ANOTHER KIND OF JAZZ MAYBE

BELA FLECK AND THE FLECKTONES... EXCELLENT MUSICIANS AND EXCELLENT MUSIC

 

 

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew is my favorite, but most say his best is Kind Of Blue

Also, "Head Hunters" (or it might be "Headhunters," I can't remember) by Herbie Hancock is great.  It's a mix of funk and jazz.

John Coltrane - My Favourite Things/Giant Steps
Albert Ayler - Bells
Miles Davis - On the Corner/Bitches Brew/Agharta/In a Silent Way
Carla Bley - The Escalator Over the Hill
Michael Mantler - The Hapless Child


Edited by Man Erg

Wynton Marsalis

Dizzy Gillespie

Count Basie

Oscar Peterson

Moe Koffman

Egberto Gismonti

Diana Krall (Although I think I spend more time looking at her pictures than listening. Wow.)

 

Edit: The problem with jazz is that there are so many "must have" albums. The last three on my list is branching out from the essentials. (my opinion only.)

 

Edited by darren

For a group with some obvious connections as prog influences: Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out and Live At Carnegie Hall.

Miles Davis, were to start - well every album listed above.

John McLaughlin Extrapolation, John Surman: Way Back When for prog precursors.  Loose Tubes (all three albums - as precursors to Earthworks). Don Ellis: Electric Bath, At Fillmore (just be released on CD after a 30+ year wait). Take a look at the list of remastered CTI albums originally made in the 70's (Creed Taylor International), ranging from Freddie Hubbard to Deodato to Allan Holdsworth - Don Sebeski's Giant Box is great (e.g for the arrangement of Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds Of Fire segued into Stravinsky's Firebird). John Mayer/Joe Harriott Indo Jazz Fusion, for a precursor of indo jazz fusion to come after. Virtual any album under the name of arranger Mike Gibbs (from the late 60's to the modern day). Mike Westbrook's March Songs. ECM Records as suggested is a great place to search and sample, although the full range of late 20th Century jazz will be heard: Jan Garbarek, John Surman, Keith Jarrett, Eberhard Weber, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie,  etc. 

 

Early US jazz rock: e.g.  Charles Lloyd, Steve Grossman (i.e. pre 1969)